Donaire: Da Flash in the Garden of ring greats

SACRAMENTO, California—To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, boxing history will be nice to those who intend to write it.
Nonito Donaire Jr. who’s bent on writing ring history, could draw inspiration and the fire to forge his place among the luminaries of his sport from the original Flash, Gabriel Elorde.
And there’s no better place to keep that goal going than New York’s famed Madison Square Garden, where Donaire puts his WBO-WBC bantamweight belts on the line against undefeated former WBO super flyweight titlist Omar Narvaez of Argentina Saturday night (Sunday morning in the Philippines).
In his excitement to fight at the Garden, Donaire—christened by his handlers as the present-day Filipino Flash—has invoked the memory of several ring heroes who have fought there, but not Elorde’s. The longest-running boxing champion of all time, Elorde was the last reigning Filipino world titleholder to box at the best-known sports arena on the planet.
It was 46 years ago when Elorde, then the reigning world junior lightweight king outpointed another Narvaez—Frank—a Puerto Rican-born New Yorker in a hard-fought, non-title match that culminated in a riot when the decision was announced.
The Garden was a virtual disaster area after the fight. With his trademark humility, Elorde must have been crestfallen following the tumult.
The original Flash fought several more fights at the fabled sporting hall on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue during his long boxing career, including a gallant but failed try to wrest the world lightweight crown from the illustrious Carlos Ortiz of Puerto Rico in November of 1966.
The late Elorde, the Manny Pacquiao of his time, has been enshrined in the Boxing Hall of Fame, along with the many greats who walked the hallowed halls of the Garden and fought in its famous ring—Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Pancho Villa, Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ortiz, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, to name  a few.
The Garden was the Mecca of boxing until Bob Arum, Donaire’s and pound-for-pound king Pacquiao’s promoter—and his arch rival, Don King moved championship boxing to Las Vegas.
Donaire, unbeaten in 10 years with a 26-1-0 record and 18 stoppages, hopes to extend his 25-bout winning streak when he faces Narvaez, who is no pushover himself with a 35-0 slate, 19 wins by knockout. The 5-foot-3, 36-year-old Narvaez has the edge in experience and will represent his native country like there’s no tomorrow, according to Donaire.
Not lost on the pundits is the fact that the Argentinian is smaller and older and has made the move to a higher weight class to challenge Donaire in a non pay-per-view bout. It will be televised on HBO’s Boxing After Dark series which comes free to regular subscribers of the cable TV giant and on the ABS-CBN network in the Philippines.
Narvaez, who is making his United States debut, jumped the gun on his foe to campaign in a higher division after defending his flyweight title 16 times.
Nevertheless, the 5-foot-7, 28-year-old Donaire who has tackled foes no taller than 5-foo-6 in his last six bouts, promises to light up the twilight HBO boxing program in this his last fight as a bantamweight. Like Narvaez, he is on his way up to the next weight—the featherweight division or even higher on the boxing scales where his true greatness would be tested.
Donaire, of San Leandro, California, by way of Talibon, Bohol, faces two challenges: Give Narvaez his first career loss and make weight at 118 pounds. Four days before the fight, the Filipino Flash told Marc Anthony Reyes of the
Inquirer in an interview in New York that he is still five to seven pounds over the weight limit.
For his previous bouts, Donaire, inactive for the last eight months,  has shown what a boxing expert terms a “freakish ability” to shed the pounds before the required weigh-in.